


Live With It

by Elleth



Series: Ladies Bingo 2017 [1]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Bleak, Character Study, Drabble Sequence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Non-Immunity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 09:37:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12528388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/pseuds/Elleth
Summary: Tuuri and her breath mask, beginning to end.





	Live With It

**Author's Note:**

> For Ladies Bingo, the "Something Useful" square of my bingo card. 500 words according to GDocs.

Ensi slipped the soft leather band around her infant granddaughter's head and fixed the breath-mask in place. The girl started squalling, and a sauna-pink fist grabbed uselessly around her face, glancing off the glass plate. 

Ensi couldn't blame her. She remembered the stench of old tires and a used plastic bottle from her childhood, an improvised safety measure until the runo for immunity testing rippled through Saimaa. She sank her mask into the lake when her mother sang her certainty. Tuuri had none of that dubious luck - firstfruits of her name. 

She would have to learn to live with it. 

*

Precocious, Tuuri crawled until her little hands hardened against the wood floor of the house, and learned to slip the mask askew to put things in her mouth - eventually, to slip it off altogether. The edge of the closed door bore her tooth-marks. 

For all her mother's desperation, the girl had no skill for magic; Ensi could not meet her in the dream realm and make her understand. It had put enough fear in Onni that he was in tears without his mask near - he was a soft one. But Tuuri… 

She would have to learn to live with it. 

* 

"Ow, _mom!"_

Ensi watched as Anne-Mari pulled the strap tight, catching silvery hair that'd slipped free of Tuuri's braids in the fastening. The leather cut into the chub of her cheeks; her mouth-plate misted up when Tuuri's eyes welled over. "I don't like it! No one else wears one except Onni, and he's _weird!"_

"The gods look out for those who look out for themselves, sweetling," said Anne-Mari, patience under strain. "Once you've learned to tolerate it, we can take it off more often. It's who you are; you have to learn to live with it." 

*

"Immunity means that you won't get sick." Tuuri snuck her thumb past her mask and into her mouth. Ensi slapped her fingers sharply; Tuuri pulled away and slipped the mask back into place with an audible sucking sound against her skin. Her little mouth behind the faceplate pulled into a tight pout.

"Yes. You know all that already; don't waste my time. Are you immune, Tuuri?" A crack of ice in her voice.

"... no?" 

"Meaning?" Ensi tapped her fingernail against the glass. 

"I have to learn to live with it, Grandma."

"Lucky you are. No going out there."

"But I - !" 

* * *

It wasn't fair. It wasn't _fair_! She'd done all mom and grandma'd said, she'd worn her mask and asked the gods to look out for her. 

Most of all, she'd learned to live with her mask - all the non-immunity lessons, contingencies that never happened, sweat itching under the leather strap at the back of her head, distorted voice and air that tasted like plastic. 

It'd been supposed to save her! 

She tore the buckle open, and dropped it in the snow, took a breath that laid salt on her tongue, and ran. 

At least she'd die without it.


End file.
